Raikkonen at a loss to explain 'confusing' Alfa Romeo pace

Kimi Raikkonen is at a loss to explain the "very confusing" fluctuation in performance of his Alfa Romeo in Sunday's Japanese Grand Prix.

Raikkonen launched his race from P13 on the grid but never succeeded in making any progress during the 53-lap race which he finished a lowly 14th, unable to score points for the Swiss outfit for a fifth consecutive time.

The Iceman was especially mystified by his car's lack of grip in the first part of the race which suddenly improved after his second pit stop and a switch from the hard to the soft tyre.

"It was a boring day that’s for sure," Raikkonen said. "I don’t know why but in the first two stints we just had no front end in the car and no real grip at all.

"Once we swapped to soft tyres actually the car was pretty nice and I think I went like three or four seconds faster suddenly. So it’s very confusing. Let’s hope we can figure it out."

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"We ran the two cars in different aero packages this weekend and now let’s hope we figure out what is what and get back to where we should be, which is fighting for the points," added the Finn.

As for Antonio Giovinazzi who started 11th, the young Italian fared even worse than his teammate, bringing his C38 home a distant P16 and complaining of similar inconsistent pace issues

"It was the same for me," said the 25-year-old.

"The pace in the race was really slow. I think qualifying was actually better - a lot better - compared to the midfield teams, but in the race we struggled a lot so we need to find a solution for the next four races.

"I’ve not really [got an idea what’s gone wrong], so we need to check with more detail and then we’ll see."

Alfa Romeo now lingers eighth in the Constructors' standings, 24 pouints behind Toro Rosso and just 7 points ahead of Haas.

Team boss Frédéric Vasseur lamented his outfit's pointless weekend, insisting Alfa needed to get to the bottom of its consistency issues.

"We got into the race hoping to be in the top 10 but in the end we weren’t able to fight for the points after the opening laps,” Vasseur said.

"We showed a much better pace in the closing stages, on the soft tyres, so we will have to review what happened and analyse the data to ensure we can deliver the same level of performance throughout the race.

"In such a tight field, we need to extract the best from our car at all times or the competition will have the upper hand, which is what happened."

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